A key part of UW Carbone Cancer Center’s mission is sharing the innovative research underway in our labs and clinics. Cancer affects people of every education level, so it is important to break down highly technical, detailed research into terms most people can understand.
Jennifer Bird, PhD, is creating fliers, slides and booklets that use art and simplified language to explain discoveries happening at Carbone Cancer Center. These materials are available on Carbone’s Community Outreach And Engagement website and span research on all major cancer types.
“I think they’re more appealing and approachable,” said Bird, a researcher and in-reach coordinator at Carbone. “Some topics are just inherently very complex and having a diagram to help explain what's going on with as few words as possible is a lot easier for some people to understand than trying to just read about it.”
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Breaking down complex topics
Bird works with Carbone researchers on how best to summarize the goals that drive years of detailed, intensive research. It is also helpful to put that in a common context. Although the average person may not understand something like how cancer cells evolve, they can understand how that problem shows up in patient care: treatments that once helped a person have stopped working.
“Researchers can get really niche and really specific, and so I’m helping them expand back out into the bigger picture that I can then translate and share with a broad audience that doesn't really necessarily know about that specific area of work,” she said.
Bird asks Carbone’s volunteer Community Advocacy Board members to review her work to make sure people without scientific backgrounds can understand them. The Community Outreach and Engagement team has given these out during their traveling outreach events around Wisconsin, and at community events like Carbone’s annual Open House. Carbone’s fundraising staff has also shared these to donors.
Carbone researchers also use these materials when they apply for grants or present their work at conferences.
Awareness and pride
The idea for creating more visual public education materials came from Dr. Noelle LoConte, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist and a professor of medical oncology at UW School of Medicine and Public Health. LoConte, who is also Carbone’s outreach program leader, saw visual diagrams used with clinical trial patients to help them understand the science involved in the trial.
LoConte wanted to increase public awareness of Carbone’s cancer research because it directly impacts public health and life-saving patient care. She also wanted to highlight the importance of public investment in cancer research. Federal grants have been a major driver of that work at UW and other academic research centers for decades.
“Research cures cancer, and tax dollars fund research, especially high-risk research ideas,” LoConte said. “It’s also a point of pride, like a lot of the science here is Nobel Prize worthy. It’s just incredible work that we want to amplify as much as we can.”
